Five Things We Learned From Today's State Of The League Address

Five things we learned from Don Garber’s state of the league press conference today.

1. Miami and Atlanta are the frontrunners for the next two expansion franchises.With New York City FC and Orlando City both already in the fold, Major League Soccer is making a major push into the southeast. And although both situations present problems, Garber indicated that Miami and Atlanta are the most likely candidates for teams 22 and 23.

Garber said the league feels it can succeed this time in Miami, which had the Fusion from 1998-2001, because the city has changed.

“Look at what the (NFL’s) Dolphins have done with international friendlies, and they’re wildly successful,” Garber said. “They’re proving that that market is changing. Miami today demographically, socially, politically is very different from the Miami of 2002 when we folded the Miami Fusion.”

The ownership group in Miami is led by David Beckham, and reports have indicated that the clause in his contract with the league allowing him to purchase a franchise expires at the end of this year. Garber would not comment on that part of the situation.

As for Atlanta, Garber said the league has been actively engaging with Falcons owner Arthur Blank and that he has been a quiet guest to several big-time league events in recent months.

“Atlanta’s a very changing market demographically,” Garber said. “It’s a big market. We need to be in the southeast, and I think if we can continue to advance our discussions positively with Arthur and the Falcons we hope to get a situation finalized.”

He also mentioned a “downsizing” stadium in Atlanta that would be the first of its kind but offered no further details.

St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Antonio and Austin, Texas, were other expansion candidates mentioned.

2. Yes, the league is making things up as it goes.File this under “common knowledge,” but Garber admitted that a young league has to continually make adjustments when it comes to player-acquisition mechanisms and other competitive balance aspects.

“What I will say is that as an emerging league, there are times when we are figuring out those rules as we go along,” he said. “I don’t know that the Clint Dempsey case is an example of that, but there could be something that comes upw ehre we say this is something that we need to figure out now because we’ll lose this player or we won’t be able to sign this player or it will prevent us from being competitive in an international competition, whatever it might be. And that means as an emerging league that we’ve got to have the ability to be flexible and evolve.”

Garber promised more transparency going forward.

“In the past, we had lots of rules that we put in place because we needed the league to succeed,” he said. “Some of them were things that we believed were the right competitive moves. We would never do one thing that would give one team a competitive advantage over another, but it just wasn’t something that was part of our DNA, to open up from a transparency perspective all the rules of the league. We’re in the process of doing that. The mechanism that got Clint Dempsey to Seattle should have been exposed or promoted prior to as opposed to afterwards because we weren’t trying to hide anything. I think you’ll see going forward that we will have more transparency in our rules.

“There’s no insidious plan. There’s no desire to hide behind any artificial system. There will be more transparency going forward, but I ask our fans to accept that at 18 years old we are still evolving and we are still doing some of this stuff on the fly.”

There you have it. Or do you?

3. The top two criteria for MLS expansion hopefuls are ownership and a downtown stadium.“It starts with the ownership group and moves from there to a downtown stadium,” Garber said. “It’s really very simple. The downtown formula has been working for us, and it is hard to imagine we would go into a market where we don’t have that scenario. It’s not an absolute, but whether it’s Minneapolis or St. Louis or San Antonio, all the potential stadium sites – and I say potential because we haven’t even begun to look deeply into those markets – all of them would be within the urban core.”

4. Much work still needs to be done from a television standpoint.MLS’ television ratings have been a disappointment, but Garber said a committed partner and a consistent schedule could make a lot of difference.

Garber said growing a fan base helps grow television ratings and that “we have to find a partner that gives us the right schedule, that gives us the right promotion and marketing, that is embracing us in ways that will allow us to have our programming be valuable and be a priority both for the broadcaster and for our fans. If we can achieve that, I believe our television ratings will grow.”

5. The league continues to look at a schedule change to a winter cycle.Just don’t call it that. Garber’s preferred terminology is “potential calendar shift,” not a schedule change. Anyway.

Garber said the league went through a fairly comprehensive process this year looking at whether it could manage a schedule change, which would mean the schedule would start around February and end at the end of May. There would then be a break coinciding with the rest of the world before starting up again in July and playing until December before a 10-12 week break.

That break is more concerning than playing games in cold weather, Garber said.

“That’s where the rub is,” he said. “We have not been able to figure out a way to solve the break and figure out a way to justify moving those games out of the very valuable May and June time period into February and the end of December.”

Garber said the league will continue to look at it but that a shift, change, whatever would not take place in the short term.

In addition, he said that as teams become more relevant to their communities, they will become more likely to still attract sizable crowds in frigid temperatures.

BONUSThis was such a great question that I had to transcribe it.

“If I may, let me indulge in a little fantasy and transport you in a time machine to the year 2033. The U.S. has qualified for its 12 th consecutive World Cup. Next year’s host, India, is ahead of schedule in stadium construction. Hopes fly that the U.S. can better its place in the 2030 finals. National team coach Landon Donovan is bullish about the gold. It’s time for the USA to put Old Glory on top of the World Cup, he said. Buzz in Major League Soccer is peaking. This year’s MLS Cup final will be watched around the globe in 100 countries. MLS logos are emblazed on chests from Timbuktu to Dublin. Last year, the FIFA Ballon d’Or winner was American. MLS is one of the top five leagues in the world.

The question is, commissioner, how did MLS get here?”

Garber’s answer can be summarized with five points: a dramatically different quality of play, the passion of its fans, the relevance of its teams, the value of its enterprise (all markets successful) and a fifth criterion he declined to discuss.

“If we can do all those things, Landon will be lifting the trophy in 2033,” Garber said.